This invention is directed to a toy vehicle which is capable of having its body portion move upwardly and downwardly with respect to its chassis portion, in conjunction with the vehicle moving across a support surface.
A plurality of toy vehicles of all kinds of shapes and description are known. Generally, these toy vehicles are constructed to mimic actual vehicles utilized in the adult world. A certain percentage of the known toy vehicles are, however, constructed to differ significantly from the actual vehicle. This class of vehicles can generally be classified as "comic vehicles."
Among the comic vehicles known are vehicles such as are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,663,169 and 1,979,242. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 1,577,743 describes an actual full-sized comic vehicle which is stated as being adapted for use in entertainment and exhibitions.
A different class of toy vehicles can generally be described as vehicles which have detachable or dislocatable parts. Thus, in this class of vehicles, upon contact with some sort of surface or the like, one or more parts of the vehicle become disengaged from other parts, or become rearranged in a different configuration from the normal configuration of parts. These types of vehicles generally are described by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,176,429; 1,363,891; 1,546,431; 3,668,804; 1,288,813 and 3,859,752. Certain of this class of vehicles, such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,859,752, aside from being dislocatable with respect to its parts, also are somewhat comical in nature, incorporating absurd or distorted features thereon, rendering a comical appearance.
Generally, the dislocatable vehicles noted in the previous paragraph do not perform their function in a cyclic manner, that is, they must be preloaded, and then, upon striking a surface, they irreversibly move from one configuration to the next. They can only be returned to their original configuration by reassembling the component parts of the vehicle back to the original configuration via manual manipulation of these parts by the operator of the toy. Comic vehicles described in the paragraph above directed to these comic vehicles do perform cyclic functions. However, the cyclic functions which they perform are of a nature wherein they simply wobble while they move across a surface or they have one or more parts which move with respect to the remainder of the parts in a cyclic manner.
It is deemed that there exists a need for a comic type vehicle which has at least one or more parts which become dislocated or disoriented with respect to the remainder of the parts as do the dislocatable vehicles described in the paragraph above directed to this class of vehicles, but which will perform in a cyclic manner and do not require reassembly of the component parts by the operator of the vehicle but will automatically interchange between one configuration and another.